Luca woke too. “Red sun go down. Tomorrow is no rain.” He then lifted himself up to see what was being written.
“It’s not about you,” Addison said.
“Is to grand’oumo in Lon-do-town.”
“Perhaps,” Addison allowed. Although it was a half ream already, he didn’t really know who it was for.
He had finished his writing for the moment when the tracks levelled off and they approached a large town. Sure enough, he heard the sound of double whistles and a conductor’s shout, “Fee-ren—zee, Fee-ren—zee.”
Once more, Addison waited with his bags at a little café barely inside the terminus while Luca went around gathering information from other young idlers in the place and stopping by periodically for a coffee and update on his progress. He’d taken nearly an hour to properly traduce the local youth of his ilk to provide them with the arrival time and departure for an osteria for Her Ladyship and her party. A slightly older female relation had come to meet Luca, and she was able to tell them where their own hotel was and how lucky—fortunato lei—Addison was to be able to stay in an albergo near it. She would do her best to secure them chambers with front facing windows. Would a three-room suite do?
The lodging of their quarry was a private residence, not a hotel or pensione. Luca’s cousin thought it belonged to an Englishman’s wife, going by the name of Partridge or something similar. Well enough situated, however, not far from the Arno River in a neighbourhood known for large and less old palazzi.
Their own residence was across an alley grandly called a via. Their parlour room windows looked upon the third storey of that edifice, and insofar as anything could be seen, Addison was able to see it.
In this way, within an hour they witnessed Her Ladyship exit with her guard, and Addison quickly got Luca’s attention. He was chatting with another clerk there, possibly trying to find out if any jobs were available. The two younger men prudently followed Her Ladyship’s party to a private edifice three streets distant where they were received, remained thirty minutes of the hour, and returned again to their lodging.
That evening, Addison and Luca followed the guard as he took off on a postprandial wandering. He crossed over the great old bridge upon which were erected leathercraft and silverworkers’ shops with residences all one atop the other, as Addison’s familiar London Bridge had used to be ornamented. Once across the river, the fellow passed three times before a house-front which Luca set off to inquire about, while Addison followed the fellow back to his palazzo.
It was, as Addison had surmised, an opium den. Evidently, the guard had received the address for this hellhole whilst still in Venice.
Imagine Addison’s surprise, when he was walking back to his lodging house, in coming across his very old friend, Allister MacIlhenny, whom he’d first known as Lobster Tail among the Grimmins Lads, and then as Taurus in the employ of Tiger Jukes in South London. He was standing upon a street corner so casually, he might be back at the southside docks on the Thames and just stopped a minute for a look-around.
“Hello there, lad,” Addison said. “Art thou selling thyself?” He had not aged as well as Addison had and looked considerably Addison’s senior, although Lobs was dressed better than he could recall, even when he was promoted to Lord R.’s Factor at St. Mary Overy’s dock works. By now, his fiery orange hair turned a dull red, along with a little brown goat of a beard. “Or mayhap you’re buying tonight?”
Lobster Tail laughed, then wrapped his long arm about Addison’s shoulder and led him off to an enoteca.
There the two caught up for old time’s sake, and Lobster asked what Addison was engaged in. Addison told him he was on a mission for Lord. R., not overstressing any more detailed business.
Lobster then said, “’Ave you seen the little maid?”
“What little maid?”
“Pretend not that yer doesn’t take me meaning, Scallop,” he said. “I’m here ’pon ’is Lordship’s bizness, same as yerself.”
Addison tried to hide that surprising news. He told him that he had not seen her in Florence and thought she might be lagging behind in Venice.
“Nay and nor will yer see ’her,” Lobster Tail said. “She’s a goner, that one. Should never have employed ’er, ’is Lordship R. I never did trust her a quarter farthing.”
“Then she’s skipped off. But to where?” Had the fumes in the shop and the late hour and day of travel made him so prone to shocks?
“Gone to ’er maker, for all I care.” He took more wine. “Nay, I’m pranking yer. Leif as not, she’s run off with one of them Greek fellers that her Nibs and company befriended on the packet ’cross the channel.” His little lower lip hair wavered, perhaps in slight mirth or worse, in an unconscious gesture Addison recalled from whenever he lied.
Addison realized two things with a shudder. First, that the pretty little French lady was dead. MacIlhenny had witnessed that death, if not caused it, to be so certain of it. And second, that she had also been in His Lordship’s employ all the time he’d been following them.
He found this last most unsettling, suggesting as it did that Her Ladyship had been somehow induced to flee England, or at least, been very ably aided in doing so, although quite underhandedly, by Lord R. himself!
This did obviate Addison’s own guilt in letting her escape him, although for what motive the Marchioness had been set up, Addison couldn’t ascertain. He now wondered if he shouldn’t have credited those gossips in Venice who spoke of Lord R.’s “being taken with that pottery heiress, Lady Georgiana Someone-or-other. Who’d recently been OBE’d by the Crown,” his interlocutor from dinner had more said. “I understand she has pots of money, that Georgiana. Porcelain pots of it!”
Addison now suspected all this deliberate new information was carefully prepared exactly as Lobster Tail intended. Because, what if, in fact, he too had been following Addison all this time?
“She were me connexion, the little maid,” Lobster said. “She left me notes to follow across two-thirds of the Continent. Like bread crumbs in a children’s nursery tale.”
Even more unsettling news. So, Lobster Tail had been following them.
“And now…?”
“And now, me fine lad Scallop, ’tis only yer and me to do it all. Just like old times, eh?”
He was exceptionally friendly, which Addison found most unsettling of all.
“Not only we two, Lobs. I have a man now in my employ.”
“So I’ve seed. If the Tiger were here, she’d push out an older house-lad and install your lad in his own suite, like the one you had yerself. But I ’spect he’s hardly good for anything more actively dire.”
“Why? Does something more dire await us?”
“Well, ’is Lordship do wish something spercific accomplished,” MacIlhenny said. “Spercific and soon.”
“To snatch her up and bring her home? Isn’t that the plan at this time?”
“P’raps! P’raps!”
He walked Addison back to his hotel, an arm over his shoulder, till Addison felt somewhat his prisoner. Lobster then joined the Italian lad and Addison as a tenant for the night there, sleeping upon the chaise in the outer chamber, as though on guard against any attempt to escape.
The following morning, Her Ladyship walked alongside her guard out of doors. Lobster Tail and Addison discussed taking her from him in a darkened alleyway where the two might overpower him while the third grasped her. They had decided on this course when Her Ladyship met up with some gentlemen, one evidently British or even American, two others Italian. As the odds were no longer in their favour, they were forced to desist.
That evening, those two men again joined the two of them. Again, they found no chance to accost her. Her Ladyship went indoors at nine of the clock and never came out that night.
Her Cerberus did come out, however, and they followed him across the bridge and river down to that place again. This time he entered, and they set about how to rid themselves of this nuisance.
&nbs
p; Addison sent Luca in to enquire what the cost might be for a private room and also to get an idea of the spread of the place. Was it all separate chambers, or hastily constructed individual cabinets? Or was this a more promiscuous fumitory where imbibers of the drug would be placed bed next to bed? All in a row?
The latter, it proved, which was not best for their wants. But the chamber they might lease would be a semi-detached one, partly open to the fumitory.
Addison and Luca entered and secured that chamber. Lobster Tail was sent back to the hotel for stout rope and weapons he had purchased in a small railroad village two days before. Foreign mountaineers are common there, and such sales not at all remarkable.
Three Italian sisters operated this hellhole. They were tall, thin, shrewish-looking, and not to be charmed. Addison had Luca tell them he preferred not to smoke but merely witness, but this they would not abide. Addison must also purchase some of the stuff, smoke it or not. One of the establishment’s already quite dissolute lads, still in his teens, showed Luca and Addison how to prepare the black, rubbery, pungent stuff for smoking and also how to prepare it to be drunk in a tiny cup of espresso. They thanked him and sent him on his way.
By the time Lobster Tail returned, Luca and Addison had separately circumnavigated the main floor and located their quarry. Addison believed he had seen him receive the opium and prepare it for himself in a small clay pipe. Like them, he was not placed out in the open among the hoi polloi—Addison thought him far too squeamish for that kind of promiscuity—but instead with a single wall parting him from the general area.
Because of the constant moving about and scrutinizing as the three woman and two lads tended to the needs of now this eater, now that smoker, they understood they must be extremely careful. Their movements must glide when at all visible, not be sudden or jerky. So, it was a long time before Addison could get himself over to the quarry’s part-open chamber and secrete himself there. He’d set Luca apart as lookout and Lobster Tail between the two, as he might have to come to Addison’s aid if the prey proved stronger than anticipated.
Lobster Tail held the ropes behind his waistcoat. All three men had sheathed stiletti, a sort of local poignard, sharply pointed and long enough to pierce anyone’s heart.
The scene was unimaginably obscure, with the little lanterns by each bed dim and guttering when they weren’t actually going out. The reflections upon the faces of the smokers, who lay in various contorted or log-like manners but who looked much like mere skeletons, even death’s heads of men and women, was unsettling to a great degree. Luca was so frightened, he couldn’t keep his eyes on any of them and thus he remained as lookout. Suddenly Addison heard the agreed-upon signal that none of the house ladies nor lads were in view, and a simultaneously a hand signal from Lobster Tail to go ahead.
Addison twisted himself out of the shadows and looked down upon the blackguard he had been following for so many weeks, the man he had come to regard as the Great Impediment to His Aim, and as the Blackest Fellow That Ever Existed.
He was not much older than Addison, spread supine on a torn and ratty sofa-chaise, all but lost to the world in his haze of opium smoke and fantastical dreams. His face was rapt, younger than ever Addison had seen it before. Even within the dim illumination from the rectangular bronze and mica lamps, Addison realized that he somehow knew him. Not from having followed him, but from some earlier, previous time or place. His coat and waist jacket had been removed and laid across a chair. His neck and chest were open to view, pale, smooth and soft. Ready for the stiletto.
Addison heard Lobster Tail whisper fiercely and saw him gesture to stab the fellow now that he was exposed. Addison had the stiletto in hand, and was ready to plunge it in, when the fellow turned, moaning softly and said in a low voice, “Nay, Father dear, thrash me! Not Tom! He is tender of years. Me, father, me, Davey!” Addison had heard these words before, many, many years ago, although he could at the moment not place where or when. Then he turned his face in his awful opium dream and his face settled out of his bad dream and into another.
Then Addison saw with astonishing clarity the half-moon scar on the drugged sleeper’s lower cheek and chin!
Cicatrix Halb Mond, the starveling German hag predicted Addison would encounter weeks before in Aachen or Dortmund, his whore translating it as “a half moon scar,” and Addison had scoffed at the words as so much trumpery. But here it was. Not only was it present, but Addison knew where it had come from: a broken ale-jar the boys’ father had dropped. In his drunken stupor, he’d picked up a large piece and used it to attack the smaller of Addison’s brothers. They two had hidden and whimpered behind the larger brother, himself only six years of age then, Addison’s beloved elder brother, Davey.
Well did Addison recall the slice the drunken lout made in Davey’s face, the gout and gush of boy blood, how the sot had stumbled backward, Davey’s grunt of pain, the other boys’ screams, their mother’s terror when she ran in, the alarums she awakened in Villas Sheen, her rough binding up of Davey’s face and neck, how he had been carried quickly to a medical student lodging near. Also, how Davey had shown up again some days later, sheepish, with a bright pink scar, this very scar before Addison! Their father had vanished for many weeks in fear of arrest.
“Davey!” Addison whispered, shaking his brother.
He half-woke in amazement to the name, and, seeing Addison, he was confused where and when he was.
“Davey! Brother mine! ’Tis I! Your little Addison. ’Tis I! Baby Addy!”
“Baby Addy!” He woke and sat up. “Baby Addy! Great stars! Alive! And well! Can it be so? How came you here?”
“First we must go from here!” Addison said. “Gather your belongings and I will help, for neither of us belong in this hellhole.”
“You are the very reason I am here at all, brother, and why I have become an addict to fancies and dreams. To forget the past. To stanch my awful guilt. I cannot tell you for how many years I sought you or for how long I thought you dead and how long I thought myself to blame. Is it really you? Truly!” He put his hands over Addison’s face and chest and Addison upon his chest, and they wept together.
When he looked up, Addison saw Lobster Tail whispering in a fury with Luca, who looked back in obvious fear. Addison went up to them. “We are mistaken. This is not who we thought it was. It is a grave error. This is a fellow near and dear to me. My very long-lost brother. Get you gone. I will see you at a later time.”
Addison helped Davey dress himself for the street, and then guided and half carried him out of doors. One of the thin sisters remarked something in a disdainful voice as they exited.
The others were waiting and Addison told them it was a mistake. He sent them back to their hotel.
Lobster Tail went grumbling off at last, badly surprised and not at all happy, for he had been looking forward to accomplishing dirty work that night, and Addison’s discovery had thwarted him. As for Luca, he continued to lay about, as usual, a street or two distant from them for most of the hours of that long night.
A small private ristorante lay a street off, and Addison brought his brother there. He plied him with cups of cafe espresso, and he watched Davey awaken bit by bit, joyful to see his brother. Many a time that night, they stroked each other’s dear, familiar faces and exchanged in broken sentences and half phrases their histories since they had last laid eyes upon each other.
Just as they were parting not long before sunrise, Davey said, “You do not know me well yet, young Addy. But if you did, you would understand I would not have taken on this close protection of a lady, unless I was well persuaded it was fully merited. And that her precipitous journey was necessary for her happiness and possibly for her very survival.”
October, 188—
Albergo B—
Florence, Italy
Sir,
As you will note, our journey in Your Service, following Her Ladyship has led us to this Italian city of great note, history, and outward beauty.
It has also led me to one of the Greatest Discoveries of My Life, and for this, I must thank you. It was the very greatest surprise of my own short and surprising existence, and one of the most important, upon which I believe you must agree, when at last I relate it.
Enough for now. Lest I burble on like a schoolgirl, I will tell it all in order.
Until that time when I may understand further all that pertains to this mission upon which I have been launched in your name, Lord, I am,
Addison Grimmins Undershot
2. Post Scriptum
Davey, aka Stephen Undershot, had invited Addison to visit with himself and his charge in the little palazzo they were staying in. He made it clear she was awaiting a gentleman, whose aid had secured Davey’s assistance. Until he arrived, Davey could not leave her for any period of time. “We have sustained a personal loss,” she told Addison. “And though your dear brother tells me it was not substantial, still I held the little thing dear while I knew her.” The Marchioness looked more relaxed than he’d seen her. She also looked younger. Was it the salubrious citrus and lavender scented air of Florence or merely freedom and a sense of impending safety?
“Your chambermaid?”
“Yes, you knew her?”
“Not at all.”
“It turns out she was also in my…in Lord R.’s employ. As you were once, I understand.”
“In England, yes.”
“And now you stand with your brother staunchly?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s a miraculous discovery. And if no other good comes out of all this, your re-encountering after all these years surely will serve.”
“There have been other benefits that have already come out of all this,” Addison’s brother said. “What about your support and acquittal in that crisis of the two Greek brothers who were wrongly accused? Or how you helped that older woman who’d lost her jewels gambling.”
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